Fat Lad’s and The Trail Eight Track

A friend of my father who drifted out of our lives as quickly as he’d floated in; was a man of far out ideas and off kilter thinking. Walking the hills, the sun was shining with full beam nostalgia strength. Yomping across dale, short naive teenager flanked by taller years of wisdom, listens intently to conversation flowing naturally around him trying to keep up with the words as well as the pace.

“So, the earth has magnetic fields?”

“Indeed”

“I believe that all the ghoulies, apparitions and unearthly sights are simply strong emotion stored to the earth.A spiritual Match of the Day to Gaia’s betamax played on loop again and again. Ghosts stuck on repeat. Recordings of the soul”

“Right…”

It’s a conversation that in all the years of slowing synapses has stayed lodged firmly in my head. If it’s true what do we leave with every turn of the cranks on the trails? All the bits of trail haunted by my learning over the years, memorys shed all over the paths of the land. Do they play back? In the dead of night do whispy ethereal riders whoop down the runs leaving misty contrails from other wordly tyres?